Blackout is the story of twelve-year-old Nick, a bullied middle-schooler, who is about to endure a planetary event that casts the Earth in total darkness for ninety-four days. Nick, like all his classmates, knows that the event will mean a kind of dark ice age, a "blackout" that threatens everything and everyone. As Nick's family prepares for self-sufficiency, he fears what will happen during the time stuck inside with his parents on the verge of divorce. As the ninety-four days start to seem like an eternity, the differences between and within families begin to erode as humankind relearns lessons of mutual dependency-and kindness.